1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a technology that controls a vehicle by use of a mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Background Art
A remote starter that controls a driving apparatus such as an engine or a motor of user's vehicle by use of a mobile terminal is conventionally known. With this technology, a user can start the driving apparatus of user's vehicle that is away from the user. Therefore, in an example, the user can turn on an air conditioner to control the temperature in the vehicle cabin to be appropriate before the user gets in user's vehicle.
A remote operation system that operates an in-vehicle apparatus of user's vehicle via a center by use of a mobile phone as the mobile terminal is known these days. There is an application for use on the mobile terminal, which displays the parking position of user's vehicle with a distance and a direction to the vehicle after calculation. Each of the application for the remote starter and the application that displays the parking position, being in need of the position information of the vehicle, makes a request to the vehicle for transmission of the position information when the application is run. The vehicle transmits the obtained position information to the mobile terminal upon reception of the request.
The application described above is started on the parked vehicle. Thus, in many cases, the apparatus such as GPS that obtains the position information is in a sleep mode for reduction of dark current. In such a state, if the apparatus that obtains the position information is activated and executes the processing for obtaining the position information upon receiving the request for transmitting the position information, the apparatus in some cases obtains only the less-accurate position information because the apparatus just after waking up often behaves erratically. In this case, the application may be available only in a less-accurate condition, or may not be available. On the other hand, keeping the apparatus activated in stable condition is undesirable in the light of power consumption.